Orange 08 – 10

It’s like there’s some metaphor here or something

So has everyone tried the new WoW expansion? Or is it just me?

Everybody In On It

Everyone is finally on the same page

I thought I’d wait for the end of the sports day story arc here. Naho and Suwa finally were able to talk to Kakeru about his mom a bit, but he’s still hiding it from the others. And Suwa and Naho are hiding their future communication from the others as well, but that ruse breaks down pretty quickly as Takako and Azu start putting more pressure on Suwa and Naho, finally just outright asking Suwa. So now all five of the group are working to change the future, although none of them were able to do the first thing in the list. Seriously, go back in time EARLY, folks! Don’t cut it so close.

“Are you asking for a tip?”

Finally figuring it out

Something else that’s a weird development, but actually fits these characters, is the dancing around the subject for Kakeru and Naho. So they both confessed that they like each other. Yay, time for a couple! At least that’s what Azu and Takako think, but not these two. “Oh, we’re not dating.” Not just from one side, from both sides. Both of them are too afraid of screwing up to date. But heck, it took the fear of a suicide attempt to get Naho to say how she feels, of course it would be difficult for the two of them to go out. And Kakeru spends half his time trying to get Suwa to confess to Naho, even after she’s confessed to him! But I think Naho takes scared and embarrassed to new heights, recoiling every time Kakeru comes near or touches her, clamming up whenever she needs to say something. It’s really easy to see how the other timeline’s Kakeru would come to the conclusion that Naho hates him for some reason, even when the true feeling is that she’s totally in love with him. She jumps away from him when she falls over on him, and then basically says next time “I don’t want to fall over on you, so I’m gonna wait until you’re gone to put my indoor shoes on.” This is, of course, heard as “It was so horrible when you touched me, so I’m gonna wait until you go away.” Seriously, these two…

It totally takes everyone else setting them up to make the slightest progress

A Plan and an Improvise

“We’re all standing up for Kakeru!”

The sports day is the big happening that they’re all looking forward to, as the letters have indicated that it seems to be a day that really put Kakeru in the dumps after he injures himself and loses the relay for the class. But rather than go along with the “Don’t let Kakeru run the relay” advice from the letters, they come up with an alternate plan: Have our group of friends arrange to cover the whole relay. They also make some other arrangements, inviting his grandmother to come watch, which she does happily, tagging along with Suwa’s family. While this isn’t exactly something that makes Kakeru beam with joy, it’s certainly something that helps ameliorate the loneliness that he seemed to feel seeing everyone else’s families there to cheer them on.

Third best couple (remember these two weren’t together in the future)

Unfortunately, we also get a lot more of the “apparently mixed signals” from Naho to Kakeru and back to Naho. Smacking her hand away when she shows concern over his arm injury, and then hiding his ankle injury, Kakeru’s just racking up the “Does he really like me?” with Naho. But as usual, we have the heart-to-heart time when Naho and Kakeru get sent on another errand (at least this time Kakeru points out that she always gets asked to do stupid stuff like that). Maybe the teacher’s trying to set them up, too. And when everyone else comes to help, they finally get Kakeru to admit to the whole group that his mother is dead, and that he’s worried that her spirit is sad watching him have fun. But the others convince him that his gloominess is probably more worrying to his mother’s spirit than being happy would be. The overall message is that letting the others help him carry his burdens is something they’ll gladly do, so he should be less hesitant to share with them. And the final result is that their team ends up winning their relay, and the overall sports day (Japanese school sports days are a really weird thing, the scoring is not like you think it is).

Maybe they’re finally getting on the same page?

Don’t Click Through to See This

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I found the most interesting thing through these three episodes was the differing views of how Kakeru’s mother’s spirit would react. Kakeru, who knows his mother from the end of her time alive, thinks more of her neuroses and depression, and therefore is worried that him being happy will make her feel worse, much like it would have while she was alive. But the others have a more idealized view of an ancestral spirit, one that will worry more if the person they are watching is not happy. And I don’t think the two are incompatible, and I can even think of ways to explain it away, perhaps like his mother suffered from a chemical imbalance or physical cause of her depression, and freed from that mortal vessel, she acts more like others would think a mother would act.

This actually was a pretty nice story arc, and we’re seeing a lot of divergence from the world of the letters, to the point that perhaps the letters aren’t relevant anymore as a barometer of things they should do for Kakeru. They still have value as harbingers of events to happen, but much less predictive power regarding the results. The only hard thing to get through in these three episodes was the terribly off-model art in episode 9, which really brought a lot of derpy expressions and just poor drawings. Perhaps they were just too preoccupied with drawing Suwa’s abs…

About Highway

Proving that you don't have to be young to love anime, I enjoy all genres and styles of shows. If it's not hurting anyone else, you should never be ashamed of what you like!